UEFA says it has lost confidence in Infantino, and FIFA's crisis just got worse
UEFA said it has lost confidence in Gianni Infantino less than 24 hours after FIFA backed down on plans to sell a commercial stake in the World Cup, deepening the leadership crisis in world football.
UEFA did the thing it almost never does in writing: it published a statement saying it no longer trusts the president of FIFA. And it did so less than 24 hours after Gianni Infantino abandoned the plan to sell a commercial stake in the World Cup — the same plan that had half of world football up in arms.
There is no generous reading of the text. UEFA wrote that FIFA’s current leadership has lost not only European football’s confidence but that of many other members of the football family, then went back to the promises Infantino made in 2016 when he ran for the presidency: transparent governance, and FIFA’s money spent on developing the game. On both counts, UEFA says, he failed.
Why has UEFA turned on Infantino now?
Because the climbdown did not close the file. Opening the World Cup to private capital united confederations, federations and player unions against it, and when Infantino pulled the plan UEFA read that as a win — but a win that exposed how far the idea had travelled without scrutiny. Transparency is the point Europe is now hammering. We covered how the sale plan emerged and Europe’s first response at the time; this is the stage where the argument stops being about the deal and starts being about who runs the place.
What actually changes because of this?
Formally, nothing yet. UEFA cannot remove anyone, and the FIFA Congress remains where everything is decided, with an arithmetic that has favoured Infantino for a decade. But the confederation also said it is already working with other partners to find a solution for the leadership of world football — and in an official statement, that sentence is the opening of a campaign rather than a vent.
There is a direct Portuguese angle: the Portuguese Football Federation votes at those congresses, and the position UEFA is assembling depends on lining up as many European federations as possible. The statutes and congress calendar are published on FIFA’s official site.
Tearing up your confidence in a press release is the easy part. Replacing a president with ten years of banked votes is something else.
By Vasco Almada
Image: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
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